Industry
Needs....
  To
Minimise Dig and Dump
To
Treat Industrial Waste
 To
Minimise Dig and Dump.
The traditional approach to waste management has been ‘dig
and dump’, but this has long been recognised as unsustainable
and uneconomic.
Apart
from the expense, there are not enough landfill sites to dump the
waste and the transfer of contaminants from one site (e.g. a gasworks
site) to another (e.g. a landfill site) is not a responsible action.
The problem is only moving from one site to another.
We
have a responsibility to future generations to provide a sustainable
society, and sustainable development requires cost-effective treatment
methods for contaminated land and polluted ground water resources.
Development
on prime brownfield sites is often impeded by local contamination
of the soil and groundwater.
Substantial
transport and landfill costs are incurred as a result of traditional
methods, including Landfill
Taxation.
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Future
legislation will lead to more expensive pollution control measures
and will be even more prohibitive in terms of dumping industrial
waste restricting the availability of suitable landfill sites.
With
a stated policy that ‘the polluters must pay’, the government
have made it explicitly clear that taxation in this area is set
to increase.
What Ecomesh propose is that all contaminated material from these
sites should, where possible, be dealt with on site using systems
which we have and are currently developing with new legislation
in mind.
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To
Treat Industrial Waste.
Disposal, and containment or treatment of industrial (often chemical
in nature) or domestic waste pose significant environmental challenges.
For
all Pictures click to enlarge
Once
it was dumped into rivers or the sea, or allowed to pollute the
soil and groundwater around the plant that created the effluent
or contaminant. It was a cheap and irresponsible method of disposal,
because the costs were external to the company. Someone else paid
the price, in the form of environmental damage, or the monetary
costs associated with clean up of the pollution at a later date.
Nowadays,
environmental legislative requirements which form part of the EU
landfill directive place greater emphasis on ‘clean’
industry, and a proactive attitude toward waste management is no
longer the preserve of the few.
Further,
the kudos associated with an ‘environmentally friendly’
commercial organisation is now well recognised. Increasing consumer
awareness places greater importance upon the environmental image
of any commercial or governmental organisation. While it is difficult
to quantify the extent of such consumer goodwill, the trend is quite
clear.
We
could cite the increasing number of ethical investment funds and
the
FTSE4GOOD share index as
evidence of this trend at the very highest level.
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